As part of this process, on the 8th of September, I applied for a document called a "Memorandum of Conviction" from the UK courts service, because I needed it as part of the supplementary documentation forming part of the next round of paperwork for the application. It hasn't arrived yet -- the cheque for the administrative fee went through my account about eleven days ago.
In mid-September, they changed the system. I now need a different document, a "subject access statement" from the National Identification Service, an administrative front-end to the Police National Computer. We just found out about this change. The NIS quote a time to supply this document of "not more than 40 days".
So it's after this additional delay that I can proceed to apply for consular interview at the US Embassy in London, and after this that the 14-16 week wait to determine whether the application is successful can start.
Did I mention at any time how much I loathe paperwork, how much I loathe petty bureaucracy, how much I loathe the intervention of government in the personal lives of individuals? No? I must make a point of writing something about that whole subject.
The old system was formerly described here, but the document is now missing. It's still in Google's cache. The new system is described here. The old URL has "cons_web" in the middle and "htm" at the end -- the new one has "cons_new" in the middle and "html" at the end.